Information that assists cooking utilizing a cooking appliance such as a microwave oven has been provided in various forms. For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-107766 (PTL 1), an information terminal is disclosed which generates a recipe unique to the cook based on control information such as heating time from the cooking appliance. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-310431 (PTL 2), a technique is disclosed in which a host computer which stores information on the type of machine of each cooking device and the like provides, to another cooking device, a cooking sequence which is customized to a cooking device by acquiring information on operation content and a state of an object to be heated. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-187824 (PTL 3), a technique is disclosed in which an instruction to proceed to a subsequent cooking step is provided to a heating cooking device in accordance with information on a state of an object to be heated corresponding to the progress of cooking in the heating cooking device.